“Wait a minute, Ryan. You’re saying that you’re literally controlling my entire smartphone right now?” asked Emily.

Ryan was sitting on the ‘Browser’ icon in the smartphone with his hands on his knees, his legs swaying forth and back. “I think so. I think it’s likely you granted me root permission, so I basically have access to the entire smartphone itself. I mean, I’m not actually controlling, as you can still do things on it, but more like I can do anything here if I will it to be.”

“Like turning on the flashlight.” The smartphone’s flashlight flicked on and off.

“Playing a music.” One of Emily’s favourite anime songs started playing for a brief moment, then stopped.

“And three things I’m actively controlling right now, are both the front and back camera, alongside with the speaker and microphone, to actually see and speak to you,” Ryan continued.

Emily squeezed her forehead. “This is… just so confusing,” she took a glance at the carefree Ryan, “and how are YOU calm in this situation?”

“I mean, there’s just so many things happening at once, I can’t even have the time to make an appropriate reaction. I’m actually pretty confused as well, but I just can’t feel it for some reason,” said Ryan nonchalantly.

There was one more thing to be mentioned. Ryan’s true cyber body was currently residing deep within the root core of the smartphone, with the cables all still attached and feeding him information. He simply took control of the display in order to generate a copy of himself and hanged around on the main screen of the smartphone. Otherwise, Emily wouldn’t be able to see him, not that it really mattered but it would be sort of weird to talk to an empty screen for her.

Emily sighed heavily. “Fine, whatever really. So, what do we do now?”

Ryan took a long stare at her—through the front camera naturally. She appeared fine in the cyberspace of the computer because of appearance-correction, but in real life, she was a walking mess. He didn’t mean to stare at her with such intensity, but it irked him on the fact that she was still wearing her crumpled purple pyjama with that blonde hair that looked like she sat in front of a tornado for an entire day.

“Speaking of which, did you even take a bath yet? From the time in here, isn’t it already like, what, one o’clock in the afternoon?”

“Uh, no?” replied Emily.

Ryan shook his head. “You know, I understand that I haven’t known you for long, you saved me and all, and even gave me a place to live for a while, but understand the position we’re in here. I’m an unknown guy, and there you stand, still in your sleeping suit. Don’t you think you should make bathing your first priority?”

“God, why do you sound so much like my father? I’m not so childish to be told to take a bath now!” she rebutted.

“Just take a bath for now, and then we’ll talk on how to proceed from here on. I’m going to find some information on my physical body’s whereabouts,” said Ryan.

He stood up, “Go. Now,” and then disappeared from the smartphone’s screen.

“Hey!” shouted Emily, but it was no use. Ryan probably turned off the phone’s microphone and went on the hunt for information using her phone.

Emily felt a little angry, considering how Ryan acted around her, who had actually saved his life. Still, he held truth in those words, and it was indeed strange for her to wear such attire, in front of someone Emily had just met for less than an hour. In the end, she decided to listen his words, and take a bath. There was no point hanging around in her room anyway, as Ryan was not even around at the current moment.

She placed the smartphone down on her computer’s table. Then, she went to the closet, opened it and took out her folded towel inside it. She closed it, and left the room.

Meanwhile, Ryan was busy thinking on where and how he should start on searching for his physical body. Right now, all he remembered was the explosion that started this all, and that was it. He could begin by looking into hospitals to see if there’s any recent transfer on victims of the explosion from his University, but there was one fatal flaw in the search for this clue. He had access to internet—thanks to Emily’s house Wi-Fi—and also to the browser within Emily’s smartphone, however, passing through a Hospital’s cyberspace to find the needed information was on a whole new level.

In fact, the information he would need to find his physical body were all behind tight securities.

“This is a problem,” contemplated Ryan, still floating inside the core of Emily’s smartphone.

Ryan kept on thinking and thinking, and then, something hit his mind.

“What if I was to find an online newspaper featuring about the explosion? There should be something like that in the open Net, and is not necessarily hard to find,” thought Ryan.

Ryan, in his current true form, was unable to move even an inch. It was due to the fact that all the cables were all still attached to him, and removing them would make him lose control of Emily’s smartphone. Not to mention, he didn’t know what would happen if he was to forcibly remove them. Then, how could he access the Net in order to find some information? That, was another hurdle for him to climb over in the search for his body.

The trick he used on making a second copy of himself on Emily’s smartphone screen couldn’t be used here. Such was because he needed to be ‘actively’ present in a certain cyberspace to analyse new data for him to process, whereas simply ‘appearing’ on the screen was just an image of his true self.

Ryan was stuck with this obstacle for a while, and he couldn’t find a true solution for it.

But then, Ryan thought about the problem in a new perspective. Browser, in its true nature, was basically an app that acts as a ‘gateway’ in order to access the Net while still maintaining its permissions within the smartphone. Ryan himself was currently in the form of an application, so it might be possible that he could access the Net just like how the Browser did. Question was, how could he do it? Then, he noticed that within Emily’s smartphone, there were three browsers. Mozilla FireCoyote, Yoogle Chrome, and a built-in default browser.

Ryan had an idea.

Through his will, Ryan called forth Yoogle Chrome. It materialized immediately within Ryan’s current cyberspace, appearing in the form of a pitch black sphere, with skittering darkness falling beneath where it floated.

“I’m sure… that Emily can just reinstall this later on,” said Ryan. His plan was obvious. Very much so.

Just like when he was on the computer’s cyberspace, Ryan spread his arms wide, and chanted the ‘magic’ word.

“Come,” once.

“Come,” twice.

“Come,” thrice.

Yes. This was Ryan’s plan in order to obtain the ability to access the Net. Definitely, there could have been other better methods than this, but for Ryan, he simply couldn’t think of any other. Every seconds passing by would mean a step closer to him becoming a full-fledged virus who had lost control of his mind, so he needed to use every methods viable for himself. Surely Emily could reinstall it later on, after all.

The Yoogle Chrome sphere floating before Ryan vibrated intensely at first, and then it stopped. It started disintegrating into million numbers of small bits in the form of mist, and was headed for Ryan. As it was before, a black hole appeared on Ryan for him to ‘consume’ the mist of data, and slowly, it all entered his body. He could feel as it was becoming one with himself, its data as a food source for Ryan, and its ability taken for himself.

The notification Ryan expected had finally appeared in front of him.

CCL Update – Version 3.5.19

You have acquired the program ‘Gateway Create’ from consuming Yoogle Chrome.

“YES!” exclaimed Ryan happily.

Just as he expected, absorbing the application gave out the same result as it did when he took the Fahren AV into himself. Ryan went and rechecked the list of the applications that had been within Emily’s smartphone, and just as he had guessed, consuming the Yoogle Chrome made it disappear from the list. It was natural considering that when Ryan consumed something, its data and ability would become a part of himself, thus making it disappear from where it had been installed previously.

Regardless, Ryan got what he needed and immediately used it.

“Gateway Create!” shouted Ryan.

The phantom version of the Yoogle Chrome appeared in front of Ryan. Then, it split into two, one floating above Ryan, while the other on his legs. Both of them combined, they started projecting a transparent and thin wall surrounding Ryan, and he could feel like his mind was leaving his body. His body itself wasn’t going anywhere, but his consciousness was being called elsewhere by the phantom program.

Soon, his vision became blurry, so much that Ryan couldn’t see merely even 5 centimetre forward. It didn’t last however, disappearing almost as fast as it came. The surrounding of Ryan was no longer within the core of Emily’s smartphone. Instead, he was in a cyberspace room that was quite small, standing before him was a single blue and flat door with pulsing lines resembling those that ran within Emily’s computer adorned on it. At its centre was a single dot, all the lines coming from and spread outward within the door’s surface. The door itself had no doorknob, so Ryan estimated that the dot itself was the ‘doorknob’.

He pressed it, and a sentence appeared in his minds.

DESTINATION:

Ryan’s first priority, like he had planned just now, was to find an online newspaper talking about the explosion. If memory served him correctly, it happened the day before, which meant Friday.

Ryan willed it in his mind, to write his destination.

DESTINATION: Explosion on Roizen University, Friday, 6th of June, 2031

He entered it, and instantly, the door shone bright and disappeared from his sight. It was a whole new sight beyond the door, as it was like a never-ending big hallway that stretched till the end of his sights could reach. It was bustling with users from all over the world in various forms and colours, some appearing like floating black Diamonds, or the simplistic cuboid with a colour of yellow, and so on. However, these were not users themselves, but rather, the devices that they were using to browse the Net.

The floor of the hallway’s cyberspace had no pulsing lines, but instead, the entire floor itself pulsed, as if carrying the entire cyberspace’s data itself within the floor. Ryan looked upward, and hovering in the sky of the cyberspace was a massive dark purple sphere rotating in place, like it was the Sun of the cyberspace. That form resembled so much like a computer’s anti-virus, probably assigned to protect the Net from suspicious users and defending from attacks. However, a big difference of its form from the usual anti-virus was that it had dark purple wings as well, slowly flapping them.

Every time it did so, the cyberspace shook ever so slightly, signifying just how humongous the wings itself were. Regardless, it was not the time for Ryan to be in awe in the architecture of the Net, and he should instead focus his attention on finding the correct site for information.

Just as he was about to walk forward, his heart—no matter how imaginary it was in his current form—started throbbing intensely. Ryan fell on his knees due to the sudden pain, his current form quivering in a rapid manner, his body glowing, and then he turned even more transparent than he was before. Previously, he could see the colour of his body, but those colours fell apart in solidity and disintegrated, leaving him in the colour of black and white.

He had flickering visions of the CCL, and his current body, then his vision blackened out for a temporary moment before returning. Ryan feared that the Net’s Security would do something to him whilst he was in that form, so using his knees, he retreated back into the small cyberspace provided by his current ability. He crawled slowly, his hands grabbing the floor and dragging his body forward, one at a time until he reached the inside of the cyberspace.

Ryan laid down on the floor, his body still in an unstable state, curled up in the form of a foetus. He closed his eyes, attempting to endure the pain, and also not noticing the words that were floating before him.

CCL WARNING!

DESYNCHRONIZATION STATE LEVEL 2!